I have been making sourdough for a while now and am not sure how to solve my problem. I have no problem making sourdough in a bread loaf pan. It comes out nice and sour with big fluffy holes. What I can't do is make any sort of shaped bread on a flat pan. It just oozes out in to a flat pancake. When it "rises" it does so out instead of up unless it is in a loaf pan. The dough is really wet but I am afraid that if I make it less wet, it won't be fluffy. I really want to make a round dome shaped loaf like I see at the store that is soft and fluffy inside like my loaf shaped bread. I am wondering if I need more four, less water,or maybe an extra step. I thought I would ask before having to make 12 more pancake breads.
Recipe
3 cups bread flour
4 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tbs. starter
1 1/2 cup water
I proof my starter overnight, then the next morning, mix all the ingredients together and do the stretch and fold with oiled hands. I let sit in warm oven for 30 min - hour, repeat 2 more times, then let sit in oven until it has doubled or out on the counter if I want to leave it overnight. I bake at 350 f with a dish of water on the bottom rack until it has a brown crust.
Replies
Hi Lucky,
I did a rough conversion of your cup measurements to weights.
You have about 375g flour and 375g water (assuming 250ml cup size). So that means you have a 100% hydration dough. That is, the water content is 100% of the flour content. Normally, you would aim for between 60% and 70% water content, depending on the type of bread you're trying to make.
So for your 375g of flour, you would aim to have between 225g (60%) and 263g (70%).
Like you said, the less wet the dough, the less fluffy. But the trade off is that a really wet dough can't hold its shape.
If you want your dough to hold its shape, try reducing the water to 263g which is roughly 1 cup and a tablespoon.
Let us know how you go.
Andrew
Andrewd has nailed it with a message delivered in a very low key and polite fashion. Allow me to be a bit more direct. Always weigh your ingredients. Using cup and spoon measurements will not deliver good and predictable results.
Thank you Andrew. I will try less water. I sure that will fix it.
The weight of flour in a cup can vary by double, depending on how you scoop it and how compressed it is in the storage container. Without weighing it, you really have no idea what your hydration is - and even if you get it right once, you have no way to accurately repeat it next time. Just a few percent can make a big difference to the result, and you will never have that control if the amount of flour is not based on weight, not volume.
Scales are very cheap.
I'd recomend that you stay with the recipe that you like, and use a dutch oven to bake your loaf.
The Dutch oven above is a good idea, also consider other trays, the French put a wet dough into corrugated baguette tray, which keeps the long thin loaves in shape...
I think your original post actually revealed what you have already learned: to get the loaf you like, you need high hydration. When you have high hydration the loaf will not hold its shape without help (usually in the form of a banneton/basket or loaf pan). This is not because you are doing anything wrong.
So if you really, really want a hearth loaf, then depending on the type of flour you can't go all that much above 70% hydration with sourdoughs and expect it to keep its shape well and even then you'll need a basket form to help it during proofing, and if you don't care, you can pour pancake batter into a loaf pan and (in a very hot oven) get a decent loaf with lots of loverly holes.
The remarks above about weighing are very helpful, imo. Without weighing, you are really blundering around. That can be fun, but as soon as you start wanting more predictable outcomes, or want to learn from different bakes, you really need to weigh. And once you do that, then you can start to think very clearly about recipes.
For example: I want a rye loaf. Do I want it 20% rye (of the flour) or 40%? I decide on 35%, say. So now I know my flour (by weight) will be 35% Rye and 65% white. Hydration: I want 68% which will have good oven spring in a tight shape when proofed in a basket. I want my loaf to weigh 680 grams (1.5 lbs). I am baking 10 loaves. So I know the total weight is 680 * 10 loaves = 6,800 and I know of that the flour will be 6800/165 (divisory parts because its 65% hydration, if it were 70% hydration the divisor here would be 170 not 165) * 100 (because flour is always the baseline of 100%, called 'baker's percent') = 4121 of which 35% (1442) is Rye and the rest (2677) is White, and the water is the remainder of the total weight (= 6800 - 4121 flour) or calculated separately 6800/165 (65% divisor) *65 (the hydration level for water of 65% versus the flour which is 100) = 2679.
So not only is scaling up and down easier but also thinking clearly about recipes - wetter or dryer - what percentages of flour mixes etc. Very hard to think in these terms when using volume measurements since cups of water and cups of flour are not equivalent whereas 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water is far more straightforward to conceive, multiply, compare etc.
Your oven is too cool. You can bake wet doughs but you need a hot oven. I bake in a brick oven. My ciabatta, which is 80% hydration, goes in at 500F. Baguettes, because they are small and wet, can also be baked hot. I imagine that if you left out the sugar and increased the proportion of your starter, you would have a more flavorful loaf.
I found a new recipe from food.com that is working out great. I will keep my old one for when I use a shaped pan but for when I want the round loaves, I now use this one:
Ingredients
Directions
Instead of kneading, I do the stretch and fold but other then that I do exactly what the recipe says.
I love it, it works really well and makes the loaves I see at the store that I wanted to make. Thanks for all of the comments everyone! And for those that commented on me using cups, I have a scale but I don't use it for baking and probley never will. Silly American I suppose.
Hi,
As a new member all the above answers will be a great help with my bread making endeavours in future. The arithmatic still got me stuffed a bit but no doubt I will learn fast.
Best Wishes to all of you from Australia.
Regards,
Jan.
Brisbane.
Hello Jan,
It is hard to go past SourDom's beginners blogs on this site to really give you a good starting point.
Don't get too worried about the 'maths' for the time being. Take a recipe and practice until you get it right. Once you have that confidence you can start worrying about some of the niceties.
Let us know how you go and don't be afraid to sing out if you need help, there'll most likely be somebody around who can help you out of a sticky situation (if not a doughy one).
Farinam